A victory for the French extreme right, which will enter the next elections with great chances of achieving it, would not only be a political catastrophe. What is at stake in these elections is the validity or decline of an entire system of values that has produced—or facilitated or allowed—some of our best social achievements; Well, we can groom ideas or do rhetorical juggling, we can look for reasons for the disaffection of so many or dive into the sea of lost grievances, but nothing will change the undeniable reality that this National Regrouping, Le Pen’s party, represents an idea of racist, unsupportive and xenophobic society, a national-populism that feeds on hatred and paranoia, that plays with fears and pits citizens against each other. I don’t know if I have to explain it, but the rise of a similar proposal in France, precisely in France, has a weight that perhaps it does not have elsewhere.
And not only because it is the second largest economy in Europe, nor because of the number of important words that are usually pronounced in the same sentence as the French demonym: illustration, for example, or human rights. Simply put, what happens in France does not stay in France. We know it more or less since Metternich, that Austrian chancellor, restorer of the Old Regime and anti-liberal by vocation, who saw it more clearly than anyone: “When France sneezes,” he said, “Europe catches a cold.” And yes: France has sneezed. What happens now? I don’t want to take the metaphor too far, but what will have to be seen is whether the body has enough defenses to prevent the cold from turning into something else. In the medium term, it will be necessary to explain why a society project based on intolerance and the grossest supremacism has germinated as it has. Yes, the time will come for that examination of conscience; But right now the important thing is to close the path to extremists. For once, it seems that the left has realized this. And that is a reason for hope.
The form that the union of the leftist parties has taken is called the New Popular Front, and the name evokes a very specific reality: the first Popular Front was founded in 1936, in response to the rise of fascism at that time, and this kind of revalidation of the terms speaks eloquently of the anxieties that overwhelm us in these difficult days. I say that this temporary union is a reason for hope because the left has too often been unable to unite, or has succumbed to infighting that sabotages its best intentions; and for months we have witnessed the irresponsible excesses of the irresponsible Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a populist or radical who has played at polarization and constant confrontation, at the demonization of moderates and at a dangerous sectarianism: saying that Ukraine had nothing fearing Russia, for example, or that Putin was the solution for Syria, or belittling the problem of anti-Semitism in France at a time when a leader of the Socialist Party was suffering attacks every day.
For me it is clear that Mélenchon, face and voice of an atrabiliary left, allergic to dialogue and sectarian in solemnity, has his share of responsibility in the emergence of the extreme right that can now come to power. Any similarity with other Western democracies is no coincidence, and we would do well to look carefully at the French phenomenon: when the only proposal is sound and fury, unstoppable anger and the conscious destruction of the center, society is breaking down into two poles and the options are reduced to extremes, and the destiny of an entire country is played out in a coin-op. The best thing that can happen to the New Popular Front is for Mélenchon to take two steps back (or more, if he can), so that the party he represents, freed from its sectarian and strife temperament, can sit down to make common and urgent cause with, for example, the social democrats of Raphaël Glucksmann, one of the most interesting figures of the moment. In the demonstrations last weekend, which brought together those who fear the extreme right in the streets, a common sense that many of us missed came to the surface. A banner read On s’engueulera plus tard: “We’ll argue later,” or “We’ll fight later.” Yes, later we can fight all you want; but now the priority is different.
The images of those crowds reminded me of other demonstrations, other streets full of people. The year was 1996; I was living in Paris then, just like now, and an important part of the French conversation revolved around the extreme right and its relationship with immigrants: just like now. A group of Africans undocumented —as they would be known later— they had taken refuge for several months, in several different places, to postpone their expulsion from the country and request their regularization. In mid-August they ended up locking themselves in the Saint-Bernard church; The security forces broke the doors of the church with an ax to force them out, and the violence of the scene was so shocking that a literature teacher told me with tears in her eyes: “Today I am ashamed to be French.” .
In those days, Jean-Marie Le Pen, president of the National Front whose direct heirs are now the majority, had launched a series of racist attacks against the players of the soccer team. He said that this team was “artificial” because it was full of “foreigners”; He threatened to “review his situation” if he won the presidential election. In the following days he singled out those players by name: he said that Loko was a Congolese born in France, that Zidane was an Algerian born in France, that Djorkaeff was an Armenian born in France. And then he said: “It would be good to find players in France.” The national team coach, Aimé Jacquet, was asked what his opinion was of Le Pen’s words, and he replied: “I don’t respond to a clown.” In case anyone doesn’t know: two years later, Aimé Jacquet’s team won the first of its two World Cups for France. I don’t remember the clown saying anything.
Twenty years later, in 2018, France won its second World Cup. The main figure of that extraordinary team was a 19-year-old young man, Kylian Mbappé, born in Paris to two immigrants: a Cameroonian father and an Algerian mother. Now I read that Mbappé, in front of the microphones of the media covering the Euro Cup, has referred to the upcoming elections. “I don’t want to represent a country that does not share the values of tolerance, diversity and respect,” he said. One of his teammates, Thuram, has been even more direct in his condemnation of National Regrouping. Thuram is the son of another of the 1998 champions: they are young people born in the world of Jean-Marie Le Pen and who now see how a good part of their country opens its arms to the made-up heirs of those old supremacists. A quarter of a century, a little more, it has taken racists to get where they are. And I, who have never been optimistic, remember what I saw on the streets back then and think that France has a way to resist now. I hope I’m not wrong.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#Eyes #France